Last Orders: The War That Came Early (59 page)

“Sounds good.” Theo held up his left hand to show off the finger that wasn’t there. He mimed getting shot. “Once is plenty.”

“Once is twice too often,” Adi said. Theo nodded. Adi went on, “Bad enough when we were fighting foreigners. Our own people …?” He scowled and muttered under his breath. “Yes, I know they were Nazis. Yes, I know they would have done horrible things to me if they got the chance. But they were Germans, dammit, and this isn’t exactly a Russian uniform I’m wearing.”

“Nope.” Theo couldn’t argue with that.

Adi’s chuckle would have curdled milk. “Funny, isn’t it? My father and I don’t see eye-to-eye about all kinds of things. He thinks I’m a jerk because I don’t care about the old-time stuff he’s interested in. And he couldn’t care less about football or anything like that. But we’ve both always wanted to be Germans, and to hell with the Germans who didn’t want to let us.”

“You can be now.” Theo paused and decided he needed to revise that: “Maybe you can.”

“Maybe. Uh-huh. That’s about it.” Adi didn’t sound gloomy, though. “I’ll tell you something, man. It’s a hell of a lot better deal than all the shit Hitler dumped on us.”

Theo didn’t know what to say: again, he couldn’t very well disagree. So he did what he usually did when he didn’t know what to say about something—he didn’t say anything about it. He had something else on his mind, anyway. “Adi?… Um, Saul?”

“Adi, please. We’re both more used to it. What’s up?”

“Where do you live, Adi?” Theo blurted. Open mouth, insert foot—the Hossbach way of doing things.

Except Adi didn’t start laughing at him. Adi didn’t even smile, or not very much. He didn’t go
So you want to pay a call on my sister, do you?
He just told Theo where the family house was and gave detailed directions for how to get there.

“Thank you,” Theo said when he finished, as much for what he hadn’t said as for what he had.

“No worries, Theo. You’re aces in my book,” Adi said. “And that and half a Reichsmark will buy you a seidel of beer.”

“Heh.” Theo acknowledged the attempt at a joke.

“Is that any way to talk to your panzer commander?”

“Heh,
Herr
Panzer Commander!” Theo sprang to attention as he might have on the parade ground and saluted as if Adi were a field marshal. They both laughed for real then. Why not? It didn’t look as if they’d have to go to war again for a while, anyhow, against their own folk or anyone else.

Peggy Druce had just hauled the vacuum cleaner out of the closet when somebody knocked on the front door. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet on a Saturday morning: early for a traveling salesman. Whatever the guy was flogging, he was damn lucky she hadn’t plugged the Hoover in yet. While it was running, she never would have heard that shy little knock.

Any excuse not to vacuum for a while seemed like a good one. She hardly ever spent money with drummers, but listening to the fellow’s spiel might be entertaining. If it wasn’t, she could tell him to take a hike. She hurried to the door and threw it open.

Albert Einstein stood on her front porch.

No, she wasn’t dreaming. The mournful face, the bushy gray mustache, the flyaway hair … He was as recognizable as Charlie Chaplin or Harpo Marx. “I am looking for Mr. Herbert Druce,” he said, his voice quiet and accented. “You would perhaps be Mrs. Druce?”

“That’s right,” she said, which might or might not have been technically true—but how often did Einstein land on your porch? She stepped aside. “Please—won’t you come in?”

“Thank you so much,” he said, and he did. A taxi sat out by the curb. The driver was reading some kind of pulp. As Peggy shut the door, Einstein went on, “Is Mr. Herbert Druce at home?”

“No, he’s not here right now,” Peggy answered, which was certainly true and just as certainly misleading. “This has to be about the big, fancy bomb, doesn’t it?”

Einstein looked at her in a new way. “You know about this? He spoke to you of this?” He took on the expression of an unhappy bloodhound.

“Not any of the technical stuff,” Peggy said. That, for once, was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. “But that nobody was sure you could make it work at all, and that even if you could it would take years and years and wouldn’t be worth the money and work you’d have to sink into it.”

“It is this last part that I would like with him to discuss,” Einstein said.

“Don’t stand there in the front hall,” Peggy told him. “Come on into the living room, for heaven’s sake. Can I get you some coffee? What do you take in it?”

“Cream and sugar, please. Again, I thank you so much.” He let her lead him in there and sit him down in the comfy chair that had been Herb’s. Seeing cigarette butts in the ashtrays, he got out his pipe and lit it.

She quickly heated up the coffee that was sitting on the stove.
When she brought him a cup, she asked, “Why do you need to talk with Herb about that? Why didn’t you do it a while ago now?”

“I needed some work to learn who had recommended to kill the project,” Einstein answered. “For clear—for obvious—reasons, this is not made known. Also, and more important, the political situation has changed.”

“How do you mean?” Peggy said.

“In Germany, they have no longer the Nazis running things,” Einstein said, sending unreadable smoke signals up from the pipe. “The Nazis, the Nazis were most of them very ignorant people. With the men now in charge there, this is not so. Many physicists had to leave Germany—”

“Because they were Jewish,” Peggy broke in.

That big, shaggy head bobbed up and down in a nod. “You are right. But not all German physicists Jews are. Some able men, some fine men, stayed there. If they build this bomb, if their government helps them this bomb to build, it is bad for every country that is not Germany.”

He sounded a hundred percent sure. He made sense, too. If there was or could be one of these super-duper bombs, the country that had it would be like a brigade of Tommy gunners squaring off against a Roman legion. It would be a fight, but not a fair fight.

“I say this to you. I will to your husband say it,” Einstein cautioned. “It is not a public thing, you understand.”

“Of course,” Peggy said quickly. “But what do you want Herb to do about it?”

“If I can make him see this is
wichtig
, ah, important—”

“Ich verstehe,”
she put in.

Even his smile seemed sad. “Ah, so you do! That is good. Where was I?
Ja
 … If I can make him see how important this is, I can perhaps persuade him to reconsider his report and to change it. This may return to the project the money and the momentum it needs.”

If anyone in the world could make Herb change his mind once he’d made it up, Albert Einstein might well be the man. But whether anyone could was a whole different question. Having known Herb her whole adult life, Peggy was inclined to doubt it.

Still, Einstein deserved the chance. “Let me tell you where to find him,” Peggy said. “In fact, here—I’ll write it down for you.” She scribbled his new address and his telephone number on a sheet from a scratch pad. “You can use the phone here to make sure he’s home if you want to.”

“Home?” Einstein asked.

“Uh-huh,” Peggy said unhappily. “We … got divorced not too long ago.”

“I did this also. It is something that happens. A pity, but it does.” Einstein stuck Herb’s address and number into a jacket pocket. “I think I will not telephone. A phone call is easy not to believe. If he is out …” The physicist shrugged. “I will another time come back. I am in Princeton, in New Jersey. It is not a long trip to make.”

“No, it isn’t,” Peggy agreed. Princeton wasn’t more than forty miles northeast of Philadelphia. An hour by train, more or less, plus whatever time you needed to travel in town.

Einstein stood up. “I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Druce, and I thank you for the good coffee.” Something glinted in his eyes. Amusement? Chances were he wouldn’t have said so much to her had he known she and Herb weren’t married any more. She’d tricked it out of him just by holding her cards close to her chest. Coughing, he added, “Please do not spread word of our little talk here.”

“I already told you I wouldn’t,” Peggy said. “You can ask Herb if you don’t trust me. We may be divorced, but he’ll still tell you I don’t gossip about anything important.”

“There is no need. I believe you,” he said. She knew she would go on feeling good about that for days.

She walked out to the front door with him. If any of the neighbors saw him and asked her questions about it … She didn’t know exactly what she’d say, but she did know it wouldn’t be anything that involved super-duper bombs.

Einstein went down the walk to the cab. The driver saw him coming and tossed his magazine aside. Einstein got in. Peggy wondered if he would make like an absent-minded professor and forget which pocket he’d used to stash Herb’s address. He didn’t, though; he found it right away. The cabbie started up the engine and drove off.

“Wow! I mean, wow!” Yes, Peggy was talking to herself more now that she lived alone. But if a surprise visit from the greatest physicist in the world didn’t rate a few words, what the dickens would?

She wanted to call Dave and tell him who’d knocked on her door. But he’d be at work—and telling him would count as gossip. Einstein had been smart to warn her. She wanted to tell everybody she knew.

Einstein had been smart? Peggy laughed at herself. Einstein
was
smart. Being smart was what made him Einstein—well, being smart and that silly hair. He might not have lost Herb’s address, but he sure hadn’t found a comb any time lately.

How many smart Jews had Hitler chased out of Germany? Peggy didn’t know, but she was sure it wasn’t a small number. Countries needed people like that. Now America had them and Germany, even this maybe-new Germany under the Salvation Committee, damn well didn’t. Served the Germans right.

“Ha!” Peggy said. She knew the person she could call. She hustled back to the phone and dialed. If he didn’t answer, no harm done. But he did. “Herb?” she said, “Listen, you’ll never guess who I just sent over to your place …”

BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE

H
ARRY
T
URTLEDOVE
is the award-winning author of the alternate-history works
The Man with the Iron Heart; Guns of the South; How Few Remain
(winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the Worldwar saga:
In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance
, and
Striking the Balance;
the Colonization books:
Second Contact, Down to Earth
, and
Aftershocks;
the Great War epics:
American Front, Walk in Hell
, and
Breakthroughs;
the American Empire novels:
Blood & Iron, The Center Cannot Hold
, and
Victorious Opposition;
and the Settling Accounts series:
Return Engagement, Drive to the East, The Grapple
, and
In at the Death
. Turtledove is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.